“Great Caesar, Dad, we forgot all about it being their prayer meeting night,” exclaimed Jerry in dismay.
“Then it is true—you did do this thing?”
“Why, Dad, I don’t know what you mean by ribald songs. We sang hymns—it was a sacred concert, you know. What harm was that? I tell you we never thought about it’s being Methodist prayer meeting night. They used to have their meeting Tuesday nights and since they’ve changed to Thursdays it’s hard to remember.”
“Did you sing nothing but hymns?”
“Why,” said Jerry, turning red, “we did sing Polly Wolly Doodle at the last. Faith said, ‘Let’s have something cheerful to wind up with.’ But we didn’t mean any harm, Father—truly we didn’t.”
“The concert was my idea, Father,” said Faith, afraid that Mr. Meredith might blame Jerry too much. “You know the Methodists themselves had a sacred concert in their church three Sunday nights ago. I thought it would be good fun to get one up in imitation of it. Only they had prayers at theirs, and we left that part out, because we heard that people thought it awful for us to pray in a graveyard. You were sitting in here all the time,” she added, “and never said a word to us.”
“I did not notice what you were doing. That is no excuse for me, of course. I am more to blame than you—I realize that. But why did you sing that foolish song at the end?”
“We didn’t think,” muttered Jerry, feeling that it was a very lame excuse, seeing that he had lectured Faith so strongly in the Good-Conduct Club sessions for her lack of thought. “We’re sorry, Father—truly, we are. Pitch into us hard—we deserve a regular combing down.”
But Mr. Meredith did no combing down or pitching into. He sat down and gathered his small culprits close to him and talked a little to them, tenderly and wisely. They were overcome with remorse and shame, and felt that they could never be so silly and thoughtless again.
“We’ve just got to punish ourselves good and hard for this,” whispered Jerry as they crept upstairs. “We’ll have a session of the Club first thing tomorrow and decide how we’ll do it. I never saw father so cut up. But I wish to goodness the Methodists would stick to one night for their prayer meeting and not wander all over the week.”